Monday, June 15, 2009

John Green Drawing

Most of you have probably seen the video I posted of drawing John Green, but if not, here it is:

And here is a scan of the final drawing:

As I said in the beginning of that video, I usually hate to draw. I understand how some people can find it relaxing, but I just feel bored and frustrated when I try to draw from life. Friends of mine who are illustration majors tell me about how they just zone out and lose track of time when they draw, but that zoning out is what I do when I'm designing somthing, not drawing. I know it just takes practice and if I really wanted to, I could get better at it. However, as a graphic designer, I don't really think it's a necessary skill, past doing readable thumbnails.

The thing with drawing for me is moderation. For example, when doing the John Green drawing, I would work for about ten minutes and then take a half hour break. However drawing for any longer than that just makes me tired and annoyed, and you can only imagine what torture the 7.5 hour drawing studio freshman year was.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a little background information on the video. Tomorrow I'll be posting drawings I've done in the past, so be on the lookout for that (I would have included them in this post, but it's late and I don't feel like finding all the images). Let me know in the comments why or why not you like to draw and what your methods are. Also, do you think drawing is a necessary skill for graphic designers?

I doodle in a private journal I have from time to time, but it's never anything complicated.

When I was in middle school, I used draw characters I liked from Japanese animation. They weren't spectacular drawings, but I liked them. Back then, I used to draw in one sitting because I would so driven and engaged to have a finished product in my hands.

I can't speak as a graphic designer, but it doesn't seem like drawing is a necessary skill for graphic design. But the two skills can surely be integrated for something interesting results.

I've never been great at drawing to be honest. Well, I got an A* in Expressive Arts, but that's mainly because I used really sneaky tactics to draw my pictures. Let's just say it involved acetate and an overhead-projector (I hope that translates correctly in America - we don't really use them any more over here).